Have you observed while waiting – like the good citizen you are – for the traffic lights to turn green at some roundabout or junction, that some wise guy usually keeps hooting his car horn behind you? Is this possibly a sign that his car horn works? Or is this a case of an adult compensating with the car horn for some deprived childhood toy? It certainly couldn’t be that this impatient Nigerian wants you to beat the traffic lights?
Strange as it may sound, to some car horn loving Nigerians, those car horns that we constantly hoot as force of habit or at every slight irritation on the road are not actually toys. The horn is a device on an automobile for making a warning noise especially where danger is perceived.
This realisation may come as a rude awakening. I do appreciate that some of us may have grown up as children deprived of toys and envied others who had those attractive toys that we desired. But we're now adults and it will amount to over compensating, if we consciously or subconsciously decide to make up for this childhood loss by playing with the car horn while driving. This distracting, annoying but seemingly pleasurable action constitutes noise pollution. There is enough pollution going on without adding this often unnecessary nuisance. We pollute the air with the exhaust fumes from our cars and dangerous fumes from power generating sets. We pollute the atmosphere with noise from water pumping machines and generators - a necessary evil in view of our epileptic national power supply. Our parties are often noisy and we block the roads with our rented plastic chairs, canopies and play loud music from the turntables or the popular live bands. We pollute the atmosphere with industrial wastes, resulting in ground water pollution and acid rain. We pollute the air and the ecosystem by gas flaring and oil spills in the Niger Delta region. We pollute the atmosphere with the noise from the loudspeakers mounted on the rooftops of mosques, churches and the record stores, and those break-of-dawn foot evangelists with their megaphones who appear to be crouching directly by your window with their repentance sermons and seem to completely ignore where their freedom ends and where your rights begin.
Apart from permanent hearing loss, these pollutions have other health implications such as unhealthy air, stress, insomnia and affect our quality of work and life. The "Big Oga" or “Madam” after - arguably - a hard day's work gets to the gates of his house and starts hooting his car horn for the gateman to open the gates leading to his/her fortress. Meanwhile, the poor gateman has diarrhea and is using the restroom. The entire neighbourhood is plunged into a cacophony of noise as the Big Man keeps his hand steady on the car horn until the poor gateman, sweating and with his trousers bunched around his knees, runs out of the toilet - business unfinished or still ongoing - to open the gate. I'm sure we can work out more ingenious and effective ways of alerting the gateman that we're approaching the house with our big cars without alerting, at the same time, the entire neighbourhood and robbers - for that matter - of our arrival.
The list of noise pollutants in our noise-loving society is endless. But we can do away, at least, with the unnecessary hooting of car horns. For those who were deprived of toys to play with as children, and are now compensating as adults with their car horns, my advice is to buy those missed toys for your own children or children around you. The sheer pleasure of watching them play with these toys and the gratitude on their young, innocent faces will compensate for your loss and deprived childhood. For the reggae music lovers, I know that Bob Nesta Marley in his song, "Punky Reggae Party", avowed that it takes a joyful noise to make the world go round. But that joyful noise he referred to wasn't the car horn.
I've a theory that some Nigerians do not use the turn signal often because it doesn't make much noise. We're a loud people and have evolved a relentless noisy environment. Have you observed some Nigerians greeting themselves in public places such as the airport? They become the cynosure of all eyes. They sometimes scream dementedly and supposedly in delight and slap themselves vigorously as if to cause bodily harm. My advice to car manufacturers for the Nigerian market is to provide some sound to the turn indicator so that more people can use it correctly and with pleasure. It may just be a whistling sound.
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